All Chapters of Ravaged By My Cold-Hearted Stepbrothers : Chapter 201 - Chapter 210

RheaThe train station was loud and crowded, the noise of announcements and rolling suitcases filling the air, but everything sounded as if it were happening underwater. My mind was numb, buzzing with a strange kind of adrenaline that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with finality. This was it. The end of one life and the beginning of… whatever came next.Elora stood beside me, her hand resting gently on my arm, her eyes shiny with unshed tears. She looked at me, her face twisted with worry and pain, and she couldn’t hold it back anymore.“Rhea, please,” she begged, her voice trembling as she squeezed my arm tighter. “Just think about this one last time. You are hurting so much right now, you’re not yourself. You’re about to do something you can never undo. Don’t leave like this.”I looked at her, and I knew she meant well, but my heart felt like stone. There was no turning back.“I am clear on this, Elora,” I said softly, but firmly. “My mind is made up. There is noth

RheaThe television in the living room was loud enough that they probably thought I couldn’t hear them.I could hear everything.I sat at the small kitchen table with a plate of rice I had made myself because nobody had offered and I listened to my father’s wife through the thin wall between the kitchen and the living room and kept my face completely still.“I don’t care what the situation is,” she was saying. Her voice had that particular quality it always had when she had decided something and was informing rather than discussing. “I don’t want the guilt in this house. You are already a handful. I don’t need another problem added to the expenses of this house. She cannot stay here. I want her gone.”I looked at my rice.I had been here four days. Four days of sleeping on the pullout sofa and eating whatever I could find and trying to take up as little space as possible. Four days of my father’s wife moving around me like I was furniture that had been delivered to the wrong address.

RheaConsciousness felt like fighting my way through thick, heavy fog. My eyelids were weighted down, refusing to obey me, and a dull ache throbbed behind my temples. I tried to blink, small sounds of discomfort escaping my throat as the world slowly came back into focus.Bright light stabbed at my eyes the moment I tried to open them, making me flinch and groan.“I think she’s coming around,” a male voice I didn’t recognize spoke nearby.“Really?” Another voice answered, rough and worn out. It sounded familiar, though... like I knew it from somewhere.Pushing past the pain, I forced my eyes open. The brightness was overwhelming, forcing me to squint until my vision cleared. I realized I was in a room I didn’t know. A medical professional in blue scrubs stood a few feet away, but my attention was instantly drawn to the man leaning against the bed rail, watching me intently.“Where am I?” My voice came out raspy, my throat dry as sandpaper.A broken sob was his only answer.“Greg?” I

RheaIt had been a month after my mother’s burial and I still wasn’t used to waking up and reaching for my phone and seeing Jackson’s name on the screen.Brandon and I talk when I feel like it, but Jackson, I cut him off completely. I came out of the bathroom with a towel around my hair and Elora was sitting on her bed looking at my phone buzzing on the nightstand with the particular expression she had when she was deciding whether to say something.She said something.“Are you not going to get that?”“No.”“Rhea.”“Elora.”She picked up the phone and held it out toward me. Jackson’s name on the screen. I watched it ring out and took the phone from her and put it face down on the dresser and went back to getting dressed.“He has called every day this week,” she said. “He came here twice. He stood outside for forty minutes the last time and you wouldn’t even open the window.”“I know.”“I’m not telling you to forgive him.” She pulled her knees up to her chest. “I know what

RheaFour Years LaterThe summer sun beat down warmly on the patio, turning the air golden and sweet. I stood by the large wooden table, folding the last of the tiny, colorful clothes that had just come off the line.Doing Zuri’s laundry had become my favorite kind of quiet. Everything was so small, so soft, carrying the scent of sunshine and lavender detergent.It was hard to believe that four years had already passed since our world changed forever, since everything broke, and somehow, we still managed to build something new from it.On the table beside me sat an endless spread of food, towers of fresh fruit, platters of sandwiches, and large glass pitchers of lemonade and chilled juice, condensation dripping lazily down the sides.The heat was thick, the kind that made the ocean sparkle endlessly and the sand burn gently beneath your feet.We were back at the beach house for the holidays. Our tradition now. The one place where everything felt peaceful…Where we could pretend